Turning Afflictions into Assets

In today’s readings for the Catholic Church we look at St. Paul’s second letter to the Corinthians 2 Cor 12:7-10.  Paul talks about an affliction that he asked the lord to remove on three different occasions.  The Lord answered him “My grace is sufficient for you, for power is made perfect in weakness.”  Paul goes on to say that I will rather boast most gladly of my weaknesses,
in order that the power of Christ may dwell with me. Therefore, I am content with weaknesses, insults,hardships, persecutions, and constraints, for the sake of Christ; for when I am weak, then I am strong.”

This made me think about how our greatest challenge in life is to turn our greatest afflictions into our greatest assets.  When God gives us the grace to overcome an affliction we can turn that into an asset for the glory of God.  Perhaps you have an anger problem and conquer it with prayer to increase your mercy, compassion, understanding.  Perhaps you are gluttonous and always eat way beyond what you need.  This can become a compulsion a habitual pattern that is difficult to bread.  Temperance and prayer are the way to conquer gluttony.  Gluttony is also drunkenness.  Carried to an extreme it is alcohol dependency.  You are depending on a substance to provide something missing from your life.  Christ is what is missing.  Alcohol dependency can be overcome and defeated with a disciplined prayer life and temperance.  When I’m talking about temperance I’m not talking about the people and ideas associated with the temperance movement.  Temperance is more like intelligent discernment about when enough is enough.  If you are the type of person who when they drink has the tendency to always drink too much then it is better to just not drink at all.  I was in that category.

So how do afflictions become our assets?  When we overcome them with God’s grace these afflictions glorify the Lord and his strength.  We dig ourselves into these holes and God is always there waiting for us to ask him to help us.  There is the catch you have to ask for the help.  God’s love is unlimited and that is why he gave us free will.  We have to freely choose to make the decision to ask for his help.  We freely chose to screw things up and that is one of the dangers of free will.  It is a necessary danger as God does not force anyone to love Him.  He wants it to be your choice.  When you make that choice your life is changed forever.  Weakness holds within it the potential for great power.  That power is the loving, saving grace of a very merciful God.  Like in the story of the prodigal son, he is the loving Father waiting for you to come home.  God’s mercy is greater than any of our afflictions and the mess we’ve made due to them.